In a small Iowa town in 1952, eleven-year-old Charlie Nebraska, whose father died in the Korean War, learns the meanings of both racism and heroism when he befriends a black man who had played baseball in the Negro Leagues.
Jerry Flack, recently-elected sixth-grade president, organizes an Elizabethan festival at school but accepts a challenge from a bully that may mean he will once again be considered a "dork."
